Junk mail wastes time, destroys trees

Published: Thursday, December 10, 1998

Thursday, December 10, 1998

TRASH: Advertisements pander to stereotypes, quickly get tossed away

I wanted to write something snide about the Student Association of Graduate Employees (SAGE), but I decided against this. I may have discovered something even more irksome.

I do not own a pager, a cellular telephone or a modem. I have no plan to acquire any of these technological marvels. Despite my quasi-Luddite tendencies, however, I am obsessed with communications. On campus I check my e-mail quite regularly and on my way home, my top priorities are to check the answering machine and the mailbox. I love knowing that people might be trying to get in touch with me.

Lately, I have come to question my enthusiasm in checking for messages and mail. I rarely find my little red light blinking, and even more rarely is the message for me. The mail is a different story. I get plenty of mail, but the bulk of it is what we would call (for lack of a better term) "junk mail."

Not all of the mail is junk. I do get my share of bills. These are not usually welcomed, but they are not quite junk. I subscribe to a number of periodicals and a few of these arrive each week. Once in a while, I even get a card or letter. Still, the junk seems to overshadow the rest.

In a recent four-day period, I received six pieces of legitimate mail and 12 pieces of junk. I will not even bother to count the ultra-junk addressed to "Resident."

The junk mail I receive comes in a variety of forms: credit card offers, subscription offers, messages from political organizations, pleas from charities, advertisements and catalogues. Each piece is, in its own way, just a request for money. Rarely do the senders of this junk see any of my cash.

They do, of course, try their best to find ways to separate me from my dough. The credit cards give great introductory interest rates. The magazines offer free trial issues. The political groups offer this perk or that. My favorites are the charities and their mailing labels.

Various organizations send me preprinted address labels bearing my address (they already know it, of course) and their insignia. The idea may be for me to think that my $35 contribution is a fair trade for their two-bit labels. I recently received nearly identical sets of such labels (from the same organization) on the same day. One envelope announced, "Your personalized mailing labels are enclosed - and they look great!" while the other proclaimed, "Your personalized 1998 holiday mailing labels are enclosed ... and they look great!" I suppose the regular labels just would not do for the holiday season. Both sets of labels have found their way to my recycling pile.

Most of the rest of the junk likewise finds its way to this pile, usually with the envelopes still sealed. Some of the junk is, however, good junk.

I have occasionally subscribed to the magazines and ordered from the catalogues. Sometimes the letters, if I bother to read them, are quite funny. Sometimes I can actually get cool stuff. As a result of junk mail, I am now a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). I sent them nothing, but they sent me a card with my name and a membership number. "Card-carrying member of the ACLU" is such a ridiculous cliche that I was utterly shocked to find out that they actually issued membership cards. (How exactly would the card be useful?). I felt compelled to keep that little paper gem.

Do not get me wrong. The "junk" modifier in "junk mail" is well-earned. I would rather not bother with this mail. How is it that I get so much junk?

Well, the suspects have already been mentioned. My magazines may be to blame.

My recent subscriptions have included a couple of book reviews, a couple of left-of-center political and cultural periodicals and one archetypically bourgeois magazine that I need not mention by name. These publications provide me with sesquipedalian reviews, accurate news summaries, insightful cultural criticism and droll cartoons. In exchange, I provide modest subscription fees and I suffer through their advertisements (these range from mundane book announcements to frightening ads for swim-at-home systems and mail-order lobster tails). This seems like a fair arrangement. The magazines, however, seem to disagree. They have taken my address and sold it to all takers.

I admit that I do not know this for sure. I do know, however, that magazines often do this sort of thing and that as my subscription list grows, I get more junk mail. Also, most of my junk-mail items (credit card offers excluded) are things which would appeal to the stereotypical reader of one of my magazines. Dana Milbank of The New Republic magazine recently wrote of an experiment in which he used four different versions of his name to see who sold his address to whom. I wish I had thought to do this. Then each piece of junk mail would announce the responsible party.

Some people would now start railing about the right to privacy and how disgusted they are to know that their "identities" (as if mere name and address constitute an identity) are being traded like any other commodity.

I have no desire to go down this road. I do not mind that my address is being circulated. After all, any dork with a phone book could quickly find my address. I am not bothered by the privacy issue; I am bothered by the representation issue. As I said, each piece of junk mail seems to be geared toward a particular stereotype of a magazine's readership. By combining the stereotypes for my various magazines (as suggested by the junk mail's target groups), one can create a composite description: I am a magazine subscriber, a frequent book buyer, an extravagant spender, a politically active fellow and a bleeding heart. As far as I can tell, only the first of these descriptions is applicable. These broad generalizations grossly misrepresent my delightfully nuanced personality.

All generalizations are bad.

My other big problem with junk mail is environmental. I thought we were trying to reduce our paper consumption. The junk mail I am receiving is not serving much of a purpose, and it just keeps on coming. Ordinarily I might not think much of this problem, but since so much of this junk mail comes from left-wing organizations, I cannot help but notice the irony. I do my part, at least, by recycling the junk.

I have produced a few reasons to feel bad about my junk mail. I have almost convinced myself that I do not want to get it anymore. The problem, of course, is that without junk mail, I would get almost nothing - and I often look in the mailbox not just for mail, but for validation. The junk mail senders may not know much about me, but they are, in their own way, interested in me. Junk mail may be junk, but it is still mail.

Patrick Friel

Friel is a graduate student in mathematics. He welcomes comments at pfriel@math.ucla.edu.

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Junk mail wastes time, destroys trees

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